Paperwork
by Astarael00
Summary: One shot. "You will tell me or I will Starlight Breaker the top ten percent of TSAB - excluding your brother - and blame it on you."


She was furious.

Her hands had stubbornly clenched into fists every time she'd forcefully uncurled them, so she had given up long ago and hardly noticed them now.

Shoulders tight, back rigid, and striding too forcefully down the hallway, Fate felt a certain satisfaction at the sharp sound her shoes made every time they hit the floor. It wasn't quite as pleasant as the crackling would have been, if she had lost control in there and fried every one of their ultra-conservative nerves, but it was a nice enough sound.

It was also the only thing keeping her from blowing a hole through the nearest three walls  
right now.

What were they _thinking_?

_Were_ they thinking?

Her thoughts swung from increasingly heated insults to cold rationalization, stopping for gas at her entirely-too-clear memory of the meeting she had just come from, the latest debacle.

By the time her front door entered her field of vision, she had managed to accumulate enough stress that her head was finally quiet: it was pounding silently, the rush of blood overwhelming her torrents of thought.

Rubbing a temple with with two fingers, Fate opened the door with her other hand and stepped inside.

"Welcome home," Nanoha said from the couch, where she was sprawled out as Fate walked in. At the lack of a reply she looked up and, surprised by the expression on the blonde's face, shot to her feet immediately.

"What happened?"

Not bothering to loosen her collar or take off her jacket, Fate headed straight past Nanoha without a word, sat down on the just-abandoned couch, and put her head in her hands.

Quietly worried, but knowing better than to press right then, Nanoha headed to the front door, where she knew Fate had left the materials from the office she always brought back. By the time she'd moved them to Fate's desk and returned to join the other on the couch, Fate was looking slightly less as though she was about to end the world.

"What happened?" Nanoha asked again.

Fate sighed and shook her still-throbbing head slightly.

"They denied our marriage application."

Unsurprised, Nanoha kept her gaze level, expression still gently questioning. The two of them had been engaged for quite some time now, both of them too busy to fill out the required paperwork or plan any sort of ceremony. Additionally, it was illegal for them to marry in the only country they knew on Earth, and in TSAB it would be considered fraternization - not the sort that got you court-martialed, but one nevertheless frowned upon by many of their superiors.

They had decided to submit the paperwork eventually anyway, each of them stealing a few minutes here and there to add to or edit the forms, until one weekend in a joint effort they'd gotten it done.

As they had discussed several times in the process, however, they were unlikely to receive approval. Their living together was something Hayate had fought long and hard for, and to this day the two of them weren't sure how she'd done it. While policies were carefully designed to help new recruits make strong bonds, anything past comradery was discouraged. No one in TSAB could afford to make emotional errors in judgment, whether on the field or in an office. Too much depended on their work.

Fate knew this. TSAB denying a relationship could not have affected her nearly this much.

After a long silence, Fate smiled a strained little smile that made her look like someone else. She said, "It's nothing, really."

Nanoha frowned.

Shortly the blonde found herself on her back with a pair of rather unamused eyes staring down at her.

"You will tell me or I will Starlight Breaker the top ten percent of TSAB - excluding your brother - and blame it on you."

In spite of herself, Fate let a soft chuckle slip at that. She shook her head, but her expression acquiesced; when she motioned that she'd like to get up, Nanoha let her go and sat back.

"...I'm not sure how much longer I can stand this," Fate confessed after a few seconds. Her head had begun to hurt again; she held one hand to her face as she talked. "Every meeting...every excuse for a meeting is just another chance for them to play at power. There's a lot of it around to tempt them, it's true, but-..." She cut herself off and paused briefly before sighing. "I was so naive when I joined. I thought I had researched enough to find what I wanted, but job descriptions can't tell you what your coworkers will be like."

Another pause, slightly longer this time, before she smiled suddenly at Nanoha - a real smile, one rarely seen outside of their home. "At least the other half of why I joined turned out better than I had hoped."

Nanoha returned her smile honestly, and stood to cross in front of where Fate sat.

Reaching out, she drew Fate toward her and wrapped her arms loosely around the other's shoulders; Fate's arms rose to circle Nanoha's waist at the same time.

They stayed that way for quite a while, until enough of the tension had drained from Fate's shoulders that the brunette could joke, "Now I'm even more tempted to Starlight Breaker them."

Her other's muffled laugh sounded deceptively like a sob. "Please don't," Fate said. "The paperwork would be endless."


End file.
